Breaking Bad fic: The Vagabond Who's Rapping
Chapter Three Continued...
Jesse was still a prisoner in his sleep. At least when he was awake Jesse had his imagination. He had learned how to use his daydreams as a refuge, as a little airy pocket in his mind where he could still breathe and be free. But in his sleep, when his subconscious took over, Jesse would feel the chains again - heavier than before, dragging him to his knees. He would feel the shadows of rusty iron bars striping his skin. And on the worst nights he’d feel Mr White’s arms wrap around him again, binding Jesse to his chest.
Jesse flinched and gasped awake. His dreams of flying bullets and falling bodies still echoed in his conscious mind. The bedclothes were twisted around him and clammy with cold sweat. Jesse rubbed his raw tired eyes. He often felt more exhausted after his nightmares than he did after long periods of insomnia. He thought he could hear voices. And then, as if it had been summoned, Mr White’s voice was hissing in his mind again.
You wouldn’t last a week in prison, Jesse, it said. Remember you’re a coward. Remember that there’s still another way out. All you have to do is find his razor...
Jesse wrapped his own arms around his knees and squeezed.
“I’ve survived worse than jail,” Jesse whispered. “I survived you.”
With that, Jesse climbed out of bed, slipped on his shoes and headed downstairs. Neil had taken the couch last night and insisted Jesse sleep in his bed, despite Jesse’s protests. Now Neil was busying himself in the kitchen, pouring a brew from his kettle. He turned from the counter and approached Jesse with a steaming mug in his hand.
“I made you some super antioxidant green tea,” Neil said brightly.
Jesse smiled and resisted the urge to say of course you did.
“You still look a little pale and feverish, Jesse. Did the sleep help at least?”
“Yeah, it helped,” he lied, sitting on the couch. “So um...Neil, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” said Neil, crossing his arms and remaining on his feet.
“It’s just that...given my current situation,” Jesse stared into his tea and then he forced the words out. “Do you think it’s stupid that I don’t just off myself?”
Jesse expected Neil to be shocked, but he barely blinked.
“No, it’s not stupid,” he answered calmly. “I think it’s brave. I admire you for it and I hope that others will too. You still have reasons to live, Jesse.”
“Yeah, like what exactly?” He was honestly clueless.
Neil took a seat on the edge of the coffee table. “Jesse, remember when you asked me how I don’t hate myself? It wasn’t just realizing that my self-hatred achieved nothing. It’s seeing that I could still have a purpose. I can still help people. I can be a walking cautionary tale. As long as you have purpose, then you have a reason to keep going.”
Jesse rubbed his head again and decided it was entirely too early for this soul searching crap. He glanced at Neil’s TV in the far corner of the living room.
“Has there been any more news?” he asked.
He nodded. “It’s a non-stop train.”
Neil lifted the remote and switched on the set. Sure enough the first image that filled the screen was a close up shot of Mrs White, looking pale and harassed, as reporters swarmed around her, blaring questions and toting microphones in her face.
In her arms, Mrs White was carrying a small black urn.
Jesse felt a chill run through him. “Is that...?”
“Yes,” said Neil. “She cremated him this morning. No talk of a funeral. Well, not for him at least.” Jesse shot Neil a questioning look and he continued, “They finally found the bodies of those two missing DEA officers. She says he visited her the morning before he died. He gave her coordinates to the place in the desert where they were buried.”
Jesse kept staring at Mrs White’s bitter yet resigned face as she moved silently through the media mob. She made it to a car where a teenage boy sat waiting behind the wheel and a baby girl could be glimpsed at in a car seat in the back. Then suddenly the news story moved to other footage. It was night and they were showing close ups of a house; a house that Jesse recognized though he had never seen it looking like this before.
“Hey...turn it up would you?” said Jesse, leaning forward.
Neil raised the volume so the news reader’s voice was clear.
“...police were called to the former White family residence in the early hours of this morning. The house on Negro Arroyo Lane had been broken into during the night by a crowd of vandals and drug abusers who were caught smoking Walter White’s signature blue meth on the premises. After neighbours alerted police to this intrusion...”
Jesse stopped listening to the report and focused on what he was seeing on the screen. The word ‘Heisenberg’ was sprayed in garish yellow graffiti on one of the walls. Methheads were huddling together on the squalid floor, clutching their glass pipes and their last fistfuls of blue crystal until cops dragged them to their feet and put them in cuffs. Jesse recognized several of their faces. He knew these tweekers. They had been his customers. Jesse’s heart caught in his chest as he saw a tall boy in a knitted hat being marched towards one of the squad cars. Jesse closed his eyes as heard Badger yelling out, “Yeah Heisenberg!”
It looked like Walter White had got his funeral after all.
“Can you switch it off please?” Jesse muttered.
He heard the TV go mute. He opened his eyes to meet Neil’s stare.
“What are you thinking, Jesse?” Neil asked.
The same question as last night, the one Jesse still hadn’t answered properly.
“I’m thinking that he always fucking wins,” Jesse hissed in frustration. “I mean, even when he’s dead...they’re praising his name like he was some sort of hero.”
Neil shrugged. “That’s the legend he made for himself on his last day. He made himself the outlaw hero of the recession...a man who fought back against cancer and our crippling health care system and tried to provide for his family. They’re saying he didn’t kill his brother-in-law either. No, the story now is that he died in the act of avenging Hank Schrader’s death, gunning down his murderers. Oh...and saving his former student too.”
Jesse cringed again. “They’re seriously saying that?”
Neil nodded solemnly. “They seriously are.”
“Well, it’s bullshit!” Jesse snarled, balling his fists. Of all the humiliations he had suffered in the last few months being portrayed as Walter White’s damsel in distress felt like the worst of them. “That man didn’t save me, alright. He told them to kill me. He let them...” Fuck it, he was going to say the word, “He let them take me and torture me. He made me lose my mind. He made me a slave, a chained up fucking dog. He ruined every part of my life, took away everything that I cared about. And he...he got away with it.”
His voice cracked and hot tears streamed down his cheeks again. Jesse didn’t care that Mr White was dead. It still felt like he was the one who got away.
Neil just sat and calmly absorbed Jesse’s rage. “I don’t know about that, Jesse. It sounds to me like you might have a purpose after all. This is the story that they are telling now because nobody has come forward to tell them anything different.”
Jesse hugged his stomach, his anger turning to panicked dread.
“Are you ready to change the story, Jesse?” Neil urged.
Do you really want to cross me again? Mr White threatened in his thoughts.
“Does it look like I am?!” Jesse snapped, desperately stalling. “What if I really don’t want another police interrogation or cameras being shoved in my face? What if I just want to, you know...go away somewhere? What if I just want to be left alone?”
Neil frowned. “You want to be alone?”
God no, thought Jesse, but he couldn’t say it out loud.
“I...I could still do it, right?” said Jesse, his voice airy and faint. “I could still leave here and go on the run. Or go into hiding some place. Like what if...I just went and lived in the forest for a while. Like, I could build myself a shelter out of branches, I could wash in the streams and eat wild berries, or I...I could grow my own food.”
“Do you know how to grow your own food?”
Jesse shut his eyes again and clutched himself tighter.
“Whatever. I’ll figure it out, okay? I’ll make it.”
He flinched as he felt Neil’s hand squeezing his shoulder again.
“Jesse, listen,” he said. “Jesse, please...look at me.”
Jesse’s eyes fluttered open. He looked into Neil’s sad but resigned eyes. And suddenly he knew. He knew what Neil was going to say to him.
“I called the police twenty minutes ago,” Neil said.
Jesse felt himself nodding. That white noise was back in his ears. All his thoughts had fallen silent. Even the voice of Mr White had gone dead quiet.
“Oh,” Jesse murmured, very quiet now. “Okay...”
“I’m sorry,” said Neil and it sounded like he meant it. “I have my own selfish reasons. I can’t be harbouring a criminal for one thing. Not with my record. And like I told you...I still regret that I didn’t get Andrea to go to the police, even though it would have been hard on her too.” Neil sighed. “I’ve no desire to betray you, Jesse. I’m trying to support you here. Honestly I...I think you made your choice when you followed me home. I think you knew what you were doing when you shaved off your beard and when you didn’t run away in the night. I think that maybe you came to me because you needed someone to help you go through with it. Because you’re scared...and I don’t blame you for being scared.”
Jesse was actually starting to feel strangely calm. He was sweating a little and his fingers shook, but the tension in him was slowly seeping away.
“If the cops know I’m here...why aren’t they kicking your door down? Why aren’t they busting in with guns, riots shields, tear gas and all that...?”
Neil rose to his feet and parted his curtains, staring through the gap.
“There’s a police car parked outside in my drive...just one car and two officers. One of them is an APD detective named Tim Roberts. He’s been heading up the investigation on the meth lab massacre. He’s a good cop and a personal friend of the late Agent Schrader. He’s a friend of mine too. I’ve done a lot of voluntary work for him and he owes me a lot of favours. In fact it was just last month that Tim and I were working together on this year’s Fugitive Safe Surrender program at a church out in Las Cruces...”
Jesse blinked. “Fugitive safe surrender?”
“It’s a four day event we hold every year,” Neil explained. “We open the church doors and offer criminals a safe supportive environment to come forward and confess. We like to think it’s a win-win situation. It saves the police time and resources, not to mention that officers don’t have to risk their lives attempting arrest wanted felons. And for the people who come to us, it’s a chance to clear their conscience and stop living in fear of being hunted down. It affords them a lot of leniency when it comes to sentencing too.”
“Safe surrender,” Jesse said again. “Is...is that what we’re doing here?”
“I’d like to think so, Jesse,” said Neil. “I’ll be honest with you...most people who come to FSS and turn themselves in...their offences are far more minor. But I’d say that the worse trouble you’re in...the more integrity that it takes to come forward.”
Jesse nodded. “When are they gonna come in here and get me?”
He hadn’t looked through the window yet, but he could tell that Neil wasn’t lying about the car. Jesse just needed to know how this was all going to go down.
“I asked Tim if they’d wait for us to come out,” Neil said. “When I called Tim earlier I told him that you were here at my house and that I thought you wouldn’t require an armed escort. Most of the other police assigned to your case are searching the roads out of town anyway. So Tim said that he and his partner would come to pick you up by themselves.” Neil paused and tilted his head. “I know that they’re cops, Jesse, but they’re human beings too. Tim has been working the crime scene. He’s seen the cell you were kept in. They don’t wish to intimidate you. They’re glad you’re still in town. They’re glad you’re talking.”
Jesse dimly remembered the last time he was arrested. There’d been two tall men grabbing his arms, yanking him up off the merry-go-round, waving a wad of cash in his face and demanding to know where it came from. He wasn’t used to gentle cops.
“So...so I just have to go out there and meet them, yeah?”
Neil nodded. “Yes. That’s how it starts.”
Jesse swallowed. “Are...are they going to put me in cuffs?”
He knew it would happen at some point. He just wanted to be prepared when it happened. He didn’t want to lose his shit now. He...he’d held it together so far.
Neil reached out and he took Jesse’s hand.
“I don’t think so. Not if you go out there willingly.”
Willingly, Jesse thought. That made it sound like he had a choice. Well no, that wasn’t really fair. Jesse had made choices over the last few days. He liked to think they had been the right choices for once in his life, even though those choices had led him into the hands of the law, who’d take all further choices away from him...probably for a long time.
But Jesse planted his feet and he stood up. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and he didn’t shudder at the sight of himself. This was his choice. This was it.
You either run from things or you face them, Jesse thought.
He let go of Neil’s hand and headed for the door.
The End
Jesse was still a prisoner in his sleep. At least when he was awake Jesse had his imagination. He had learned how to use his daydreams as a refuge, as a little airy pocket in his mind where he could still breathe and be free. But in his sleep, when his subconscious took over, Jesse would feel the chains again - heavier than before, dragging him to his knees. He would feel the shadows of rusty iron bars striping his skin. And on the worst nights he’d feel Mr White’s arms wrap around him again, binding Jesse to his chest.
Jesse flinched and gasped awake. His dreams of flying bullets and falling bodies still echoed in his conscious mind. The bedclothes were twisted around him and clammy with cold sweat. Jesse rubbed his raw tired eyes. He often felt more exhausted after his nightmares than he did after long periods of insomnia. He thought he could hear voices. And then, as if it had been summoned, Mr White’s voice was hissing in his mind again.
You wouldn’t last a week in prison, Jesse, it said. Remember you’re a coward. Remember that there’s still another way out. All you have to do is find his razor...
Jesse wrapped his own arms around his knees and squeezed.
“I’ve survived worse than jail,” Jesse whispered. “I survived you.”
With that, Jesse climbed out of bed, slipped on his shoes and headed downstairs. Neil had taken the couch last night and insisted Jesse sleep in his bed, despite Jesse’s protests. Now Neil was busying himself in the kitchen, pouring a brew from his kettle. He turned from the counter and approached Jesse with a steaming mug in his hand.
“I made you some super antioxidant green tea,” Neil said brightly.
Jesse smiled and resisted the urge to say of course you did.
“You still look a little pale and feverish, Jesse. Did the sleep help at least?”
“Yeah, it helped,” he lied, sitting on the couch. “So um...Neil, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” said Neil, crossing his arms and remaining on his feet.
“It’s just that...given my current situation,” Jesse stared into his tea and then he forced the words out. “Do you think it’s stupid that I don’t just off myself?”
Jesse expected Neil to be shocked, but he barely blinked.
“No, it’s not stupid,” he answered calmly. “I think it’s brave. I admire you for it and I hope that others will too. You still have reasons to live, Jesse.”
“Yeah, like what exactly?” He was honestly clueless.
Neil took a seat on the edge of the coffee table. “Jesse, remember when you asked me how I don’t hate myself? It wasn’t just realizing that my self-hatred achieved nothing. It’s seeing that I could still have a purpose. I can still help people. I can be a walking cautionary tale. As long as you have purpose, then you have a reason to keep going.”
Jesse rubbed his head again and decided it was entirely too early for this soul searching crap. He glanced at Neil’s TV in the far corner of the living room.
“Has there been any more news?” he asked.
He nodded. “It’s a non-stop train.”
Neil lifted the remote and switched on the set. Sure enough the first image that filled the screen was a close up shot of Mrs White, looking pale and harassed, as reporters swarmed around her, blaring questions and toting microphones in her face.
In her arms, Mrs White was carrying a small black urn.
Jesse felt a chill run through him. “Is that...?”
“Yes,” said Neil. “She cremated him this morning. No talk of a funeral. Well, not for him at least.” Jesse shot Neil a questioning look and he continued, “They finally found the bodies of those two missing DEA officers. She says he visited her the morning before he died. He gave her coordinates to the place in the desert where they were buried.”
Jesse kept staring at Mrs White’s bitter yet resigned face as she moved silently through the media mob. She made it to a car where a teenage boy sat waiting behind the wheel and a baby girl could be glimpsed at in a car seat in the back. Then suddenly the news story moved to other footage. It was night and they were showing close ups of a house; a house that Jesse recognized though he had never seen it looking like this before.
“Hey...turn it up would you?” said Jesse, leaning forward.
Neil raised the volume so the news reader’s voice was clear.
“...police were called to the former White family residence in the early hours of this morning. The house on Negro Arroyo Lane had been broken into during the night by a crowd of vandals and drug abusers who were caught smoking Walter White’s signature blue meth on the premises. After neighbours alerted police to this intrusion...”
Jesse stopped listening to the report and focused on what he was seeing on the screen. The word ‘Heisenberg’ was sprayed in garish yellow graffiti on one of the walls. Methheads were huddling together on the squalid floor, clutching their glass pipes and their last fistfuls of blue crystal until cops dragged them to their feet and put them in cuffs. Jesse recognized several of their faces. He knew these tweekers. They had been his customers. Jesse’s heart caught in his chest as he saw a tall boy in a knitted hat being marched towards one of the squad cars. Jesse closed his eyes as heard Badger yelling out, “Yeah Heisenberg!”
It looked like Walter White had got his funeral after all.
“Can you switch it off please?” Jesse muttered.
He heard the TV go mute. He opened his eyes to meet Neil’s stare.
“What are you thinking, Jesse?” Neil asked.
The same question as last night, the one Jesse still hadn’t answered properly.
“I’m thinking that he always fucking wins,” Jesse hissed in frustration. “I mean, even when he’s dead...they’re praising his name like he was some sort of hero.”
Neil shrugged. “That’s the legend he made for himself on his last day. He made himself the outlaw hero of the recession...a man who fought back against cancer and our crippling health care system and tried to provide for his family. They’re saying he didn’t kill his brother-in-law either. No, the story now is that he died in the act of avenging Hank Schrader’s death, gunning down his murderers. Oh...and saving his former student too.”
Jesse cringed again. “They’re seriously saying that?”
Neil nodded solemnly. “They seriously are.”
“Well, it’s bullshit!” Jesse snarled, balling his fists. Of all the humiliations he had suffered in the last few months being portrayed as Walter White’s damsel in distress felt like the worst of them. “That man didn’t save me, alright. He told them to kill me. He let them...” Fuck it, he was going to say the word, “He let them take me and torture me. He made me lose my mind. He made me a slave, a chained up fucking dog. He ruined every part of my life, took away everything that I cared about. And he...he got away with it.”
His voice cracked and hot tears streamed down his cheeks again. Jesse didn’t care that Mr White was dead. It still felt like he was the one who got away.
Neil just sat and calmly absorbed Jesse’s rage. “I don’t know about that, Jesse. It sounds to me like you might have a purpose after all. This is the story that they are telling now because nobody has come forward to tell them anything different.”
Jesse hugged his stomach, his anger turning to panicked dread.
“Are you ready to change the story, Jesse?” Neil urged.
Do you really want to cross me again? Mr White threatened in his thoughts.
“Does it look like I am?!” Jesse snapped, desperately stalling. “What if I really don’t want another police interrogation or cameras being shoved in my face? What if I just want to, you know...go away somewhere? What if I just want to be left alone?”
Neil frowned. “You want to be alone?”
God no, thought Jesse, but he couldn’t say it out loud.
“I...I could still do it, right?” said Jesse, his voice airy and faint. “I could still leave here and go on the run. Or go into hiding some place. Like what if...I just went and lived in the forest for a while. Like, I could build myself a shelter out of branches, I could wash in the streams and eat wild berries, or I...I could grow my own food.”
“Do you know how to grow your own food?”
Jesse shut his eyes again and clutched himself tighter.
“Whatever. I’ll figure it out, okay? I’ll make it.”
He flinched as he felt Neil’s hand squeezing his shoulder again.
“Jesse, listen,” he said. “Jesse, please...look at me.”
Jesse’s eyes fluttered open. He looked into Neil’s sad but resigned eyes. And suddenly he knew. He knew what Neil was going to say to him.
“I called the police twenty minutes ago,” Neil said.
Jesse felt himself nodding. That white noise was back in his ears. All his thoughts had fallen silent. Even the voice of Mr White had gone dead quiet.
“Oh,” Jesse murmured, very quiet now. “Okay...”
“I’m sorry,” said Neil and it sounded like he meant it. “I have my own selfish reasons. I can’t be harbouring a criminal for one thing. Not with my record. And like I told you...I still regret that I didn’t get Andrea to go to the police, even though it would have been hard on her too.” Neil sighed. “I’ve no desire to betray you, Jesse. I’m trying to support you here. Honestly I...I think you made your choice when you followed me home. I think you knew what you were doing when you shaved off your beard and when you didn’t run away in the night. I think that maybe you came to me because you needed someone to help you go through with it. Because you’re scared...and I don’t blame you for being scared.”
Jesse was actually starting to feel strangely calm. He was sweating a little and his fingers shook, but the tension in him was slowly seeping away.
“If the cops know I’m here...why aren’t they kicking your door down? Why aren’t they busting in with guns, riots shields, tear gas and all that...?”
Neil rose to his feet and parted his curtains, staring through the gap.
“There’s a police car parked outside in my drive...just one car and two officers. One of them is an APD detective named Tim Roberts. He’s been heading up the investigation on the meth lab massacre. He’s a good cop and a personal friend of the late Agent Schrader. He’s a friend of mine too. I’ve done a lot of voluntary work for him and he owes me a lot of favours. In fact it was just last month that Tim and I were working together on this year’s Fugitive Safe Surrender program at a church out in Las Cruces...”
Jesse blinked. “Fugitive safe surrender?”
“It’s a four day event we hold every year,” Neil explained. “We open the church doors and offer criminals a safe supportive environment to come forward and confess. We like to think it’s a win-win situation. It saves the police time and resources, not to mention that officers don’t have to risk their lives attempting arrest wanted felons. And for the people who come to us, it’s a chance to clear their conscience and stop living in fear of being hunted down. It affords them a lot of leniency when it comes to sentencing too.”
“Safe surrender,” Jesse said again. “Is...is that what we’re doing here?”
“I’d like to think so, Jesse,” said Neil. “I’ll be honest with you...most people who come to FSS and turn themselves in...their offences are far more minor. But I’d say that the worse trouble you’re in...the more integrity that it takes to come forward.”
Jesse nodded. “When are they gonna come in here and get me?”
He hadn’t looked through the window yet, but he could tell that Neil wasn’t lying about the car. Jesse just needed to know how this was all going to go down.
“I asked Tim if they’d wait for us to come out,” Neil said. “When I called Tim earlier I told him that you were here at my house and that I thought you wouldn’t require an armed escort. Most of the other police assigned to your case are searching the roads out of town anyway. So Tim said that he and his partner would come to pick you up by themselves.” Neil paused and tilted his head. “I know that they’re cops, Jesse, but they’re human beings too. Tim has been working the crime scene. He’s seen the cell you were kept in. They don’t wish to intimidate you. They’re glad you’re still in town. They’re glad you’re talking.”
Jesse dimly remembered the last time he was arrested. There’d been two tall men grabbing his arms, yanking him up off the merry-go-round, waving a wad of cash in his face and demanding to know where it came from. He wasn’t used to gentle cops.
“So...so I just have to go out there and meet them, yeah?”
Neil nodded. “Yes. That’s how it starts.”
Jesse swallowed. “Are...are they going to put me in cuffs?”
He knew it would happen at some point. He just wanted to be prepared when it happened. He didn’t want to lose his shit now. He...he’d held it together so far.
Neil reached out and he took Jesse’s hand.
“I don’t think so. Not if you go out there willingly.”
Willingly, Jesse thought. That made it sound like he had a choice. Well no, that wasn’t really fair. Jesse had made choices over the last few days. He liked to think they had been the right choices for once in his life, even though those choices had led him into the hands of the law, who’d take all further choices away from him...probably for a long time.
But Jesse planted his feet and he stood up. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and he didn’t shudder at the sight of himself. This was his choice. This was it.
You either run from things or you face them, Jesse thought.
He let go of Neil’s hand and headed for the door.
The End